Race Recap: Heitz of Heaven 5K 2017

This is one of those races that I signed up for so far in advance that by the time we were about a month out, I realized there was another race the same day that I kind of wanted to do - PERSAD's Donut Dash was scheduled for the same day/time, so unfortunately I didn't get to do that one this year despite really wanting to. That said, I was also pretty excited for this race!

At some point over the last year, Mike and I went and played mini golf out on Neville Island, and we noted that it was incredibly flat and it would be kind of cool to run a race out there. So when we heard about the Heitz of Heaven 5K months ago, I signed up right away. Sometime in the middle of last week, after hearing that SCRR was going to be providing pacers, and reading one of many posts from the event page on Facebook reminding us that it was a flat, fast course, I decided what the heck, why not go for a PR? It was my last scheduled 5K of the year and it seemed like a really good opportunity based on my recent race results and I was curious to see how I'd do.

First order of business was making sure I didn't crash like I did at Run Around the Square. That meant eating to maintenance on the Friday/Saturday before the race so that my glycogen stores weren't depleted from the get go. I'm a little ahead of schedule as far as where I want to be with my weight for this cycle, but as soon as I get under 150 I'm going to start adding more calories in, so I don't want to put that off any longer than I have to. That said, a couple days at maintenance isn't going to hurt me, and it sure was fun adding food to my calorie log and still needing to eat more to get to my target. With that taken care of (including pre-race pizza on Saturday night), I woke up pretty early Sunday to get ready.

It was supposed to be a pretty chilly morning, but I enjoyed wearing this tank for Run Around the Square and I was certain I didn't want to wear long sleeves. I do have some short sleeved tops for running, but lately they've been bunching up oddly around my upper arm when I wear them, and if I was making a serious (for me) attempt, I didn't want the distraction. Plus, when I run a race paced by SCRR it's always nice to represent a bit more visibly than my yellow hat allows, and you usually get more cheers on the course from the other club members, which is nice. Otherwise I had all my normal gear and breakfast stuff.

Not quite awake yet, but I'm ready!

Driving out to Neville Island we listened to the new Queens of the Stone Age album (seeing them in Pittsburgh on the 13th!) and were properly awake by the time we arrived. Everything was pretty nicely organized - this is their fifth year and the sports complex was bustling in addition to all the race day activities.

We quickly found the raffle area, bought and dispersed a handful of tickets, and then wandered over to bib pickup, where we got our shirts (short sleeve, tech, not bad) and bibs. Went back to the car to drop off stuff and I changed into my shoes (Launch 4s for races, woo!) and took off my sweatpants and hoodie. It was sunny, so despite it being in the 50s I was surprisingly fine with my tank and capris despite expecting to be uncomfortable until the race started.

We hit the restrooms and then tried to figure out where we were supposed to put the tabs from our bibs that were entries for a door prize type drawing. It's a good thing we stopped back at the registration tent to check, because in addition to telling us where to enter the drawing, they let us know that for some reason the chip strips on the backs of the bibs were put on sideways, and so we needed to turn our bibs 90 degrees in order for the timing to work properly! Good info to have, especially for a PR attempt. We repinned our bibs and then did a little warmup run around the area until it was about time to start.

We ended up back over by the main area where everyone was gathered for the national anthem and spotted the SCRR pace team. I figured we could follow them to the start area and started looking for the 9:30 pacer, since that's who I needed to stick with to have a good shot at the PR. My old best time came from the Ice Cream 5K in 2016 at 29:55, and I was moderately confident that I could do better. Imagine my disappointment when I realized that the 9:30 pacer was no other than the same person who spent most of the EQT Ten Miler going too fast, and too slow, and too fast again! Arrrrgh. But I have my watch now so at least I would know how much we were off the planned pace and adjust accordingly.

So grudgingly I lined up next to the pacer at the start area - I'm not sure if it's just an odd pace or if other people have had the same problems with this person, but there weren't a lot of other people standing nearby. Eventually they pulled everyone forward a bit and it condensed. I moved over to the right since that would be our first turn, and right on time, we were off!

Blue tank, pink hat, slightly left of center - that's me!

It was a pretty small race and there were lots of walkers. I'd expected a lot more speedy racers given the nature of the course, but I think there were lots of options on this particular day and so I was actually kind of further up than I'm used to being, for sure. And as we wound our way around the sports complex and out onto the main drag of the island, glancing at my watch told me pretty much what I expected, and confirmed what my legs and lungs were telling me - we were going out way too fast. The pacer asked what I had and I reported 8:30ish - a minute per mile too fast! They did seem to rein it in a bit after that, but by the time we hit the first mile at 9:11 I decided to hang back and make sure I didn't burn out too early.

The course was a fairly straight out and back, so I gave and received the expected SCRR cheers, and got to high five Mike as I approached the turn around point. I was pretty much by myself, the pacer remaining not too far ahead of me. My legs felt pretty good though I definitely felt the strain of pushing below 10:00 miles for an extended period of time since it's not something I've done all that often. It was hard but I didn't feel like I was going to have to fall back any further or slow down to make sure I could finish, and whenever my pace started wavering above 9:30 I found that I could push myself to speed up again without much trouble. I hit mile 2 with a 9:19 split. If nothing else, the pacer gave me something to chase, which generally works for me.

Mile 3 was definitely more challenging. I was breathing a lot harder as I tried to maintain effort. We wound back off the main street and through the same residential neighborhood we'd gone through on the way out, and back towards the sports complex. I picked off at least one person in this section and I'm sure she heard me coming as I chugged along with audible breaths, doing my best to run tangents as we twisted through the streets. My speed was still steady as we climbed the tiny uphill back into the parking lot where we started and wound around a different way towards the finish. My 3 mile split was 9:20 and at this point I knew I was going to get my PR - now it was a matter of by how much.

Music was blasting and everyone was cheering as we approached the end of the course. Because of the way things were set up, I couldn't see the finish line but it was clear we had to be close. We made one last turn and it came into view and I literally yelled to the pacer, who was now beckoning me and encouraging me on (credit where credit's due, this is exactly how it went at EQT and they did this well at least), "Is this thing over yet?!" After passing the pacer I saw one last person between me and the finish line - a guy - and somehow found a little kick to try to pass. According to my Garmin it was some kick - it says I at least briefly dropped below 7:00/mile but it would have been for just a few seconds if I actually did. I fully expected the guy (in the red shirt below) to put up a fight, but instead I zoomed by, glancing at the clock as it clicked past 29:00 and throwing a double thumbs up to the photographer who was capturing each runner as they crossed. Moments later I even managed to remember to stop my watch, which flashed a new 5K record notification at me in congratulations.

This is my new favorite race photo. The look on my face says it all, I think.

I snagged a bottle of water and went looking for Mike. We met back up, swung by the car so I could put my sweats back on and change shoes, then immediately made our way to the post-race goodies area, where they were serving up hot pizza, the ubiquitous Smiley Cookies, and delicious chocolate milk and Gatorade. I got one of just about everything and it was all amazing - but then again, everything is when you just got a PR!

After stuffing our faces a bit we went to check on our official results (the timing company they used has laptops set up at the event so all you have to do is plug in your bib number and it spits out your result - pretty handy!) but it was immediately clear that something was up as my time was off (in a bad way) by about five minutes, and Mike's was nearly double what it actually was, and slower than me! Not long after we heard them make an announcement over the PA that they were working to fix the issue and to please stick around for the awards ceremony. We may have snagged some more pizza and then found a sunny spot to hang out for a bit. They did the door prizes, which alas, neither of us won (no luck on the raffles either!) and I started checking the results online to see if they were correct. Eventually, my time flipped over to what made sense based on the clock and my Garmin when I finished...

And so now it's official! My new 5K PR is 28:54 - just over a minute's improvement from last year, which is awesome! They actually gave up on getting the results sorted properly after the race (we stuck around for about an hour or so longer than we would have otherwise), so I grabbed this screenshot afterwards, but I'm happy to note that not only did I get a PR, but I came in third in my age group (so one of those medals up there in the first picture is mine)! They're supposed to be mailing the medals out this week so hopefully I'll have that soon. Mike was listed as winning his group when we left, and now he's in second, so it's probably for the best that they sent everyone home with promises to sort it out later. It was a little disappointing that we weren't able to receive the medals properly, but overall I can't fault them for how they handled it.

I would definitely run this race again - it was well-organized, had good facilities available for the racers, nice raffle prizes plus a decent number of door prize drawings, yummy food and drink (and a good selection of it), pacers (even if mine was a bit of a dud, it worked out in the long run), and is an excellent, flat course to really try to push yourself on! And on top of that, race photos were posted promptly, did a good job covering pre-race as well as starting and individual finishing photos, and were free to download - credit to John Doucette Photography for that. A much-appreciated feature for a race, honestly! So yes - do recommend, though I may have to alternate between this one and the Donut Dash if they keep sharing dates, because mmm, donuts...